An Organisational-Life Cycle Assessment Approach for Internet of Things Technologies Implementation in a Human Milk Bank

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

Dear Editor and Authors,

I send you my review about the article entitled “An Organisational-Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) approach for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies implementation in a human milk bank”.

The scope of the paper, was to understand the trade-offs between optimising human milk transportation and the environmental impact.

In my opinion, the article result sufficiently well written but it is not very well structured and, also, it show some lacks.

Therefore, my opinion is that it result suitable for publication after some minor revisions that I have reported below.

Firstly, in the title should be avoid the use of acronyms, thus, they should be delete “(O-LCA)” and “(IoT)”.

Furthermore, since in a scientific article the background should be reported in the introduction the chapter 2 “Theoretical background” should be attach to the introduction and, also they should be summarise because, in the present version, they are little dispersive.

The paragraph 3 Methodology” should be change in “Materials and methods” and it should needs to be improved adding the number of the trials performed,

Furthermore, in my opinion, the difference among the number of the trials and the number of replicate of analysis should be highlighted.

Moreover, the paragraph 3.1 “General rules for the environmental impact assessment of organisations” result little dispersive and for this reason it should be summarise.

In addition, the paragraph 3.3 “Definition of goal and scope” should be summarise and reduced at 3 or 4 lines and it should be placed at the end of introduction.

The paragraph 3.2 “Life cycle inventory” should not be divided in sub paragraph, the extensive use of sub-paragraph negatively affect the understanding of the text by the readers. For this reason I suggest to the Authors to merging the all sub-paragraphs into one paragraph and, after, I suggest to summarise it.

The results is well presented and they are well discussed, also in comparison to the data reported in the literature.

Finally, the conclusions resulted adequate to the data showed and to the aim of the research.

 

Best regards

Author Response

Dear Editor and Authors,

I send you my review about the article entitled “An Organisational-Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) approach for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies implementation in a human milk bank”.

The scope of the paper, was to understand the trade-offs between optimising human milk transportation and the environmental impact.

In my opinion, the article result sufficiently well written but it is not very well structured and, also, it show some lacks.

Therefore, my opinion is that it result suitable for publication after some minor revisions that I have reported below.

 

Firstly, in the title should be avoid the use of acronyms, thus, they should be delete “(O-LCA)” and “(IoT)”.

The title was updated and the acronyms were removed.

 

Furthermore, since in a scientific article the background should be reported in the introduction the chapter 2 “Theoretical background” should be attach to the introduction and, also they should be summarise because, in the present version, they are little dispersive.

As O-LCA is a new member of the LCA family and very few studies can be found in the literature using this method, the authors consider it advantageous to the LCA community to present a section describing its background. The authors modified the title of the section to “Literature Review on O-LCA”.

 

 

The paragraph 3 Methodology” should be change in “Materials and methods” and it should needs to be improved adding the number of the trials performed,

Furthermore, in my opinion, the difference among the number of the trials and the number of replicate of analysis should be highlighted.

The section Methodology was updated to “Materials and Methods”. However, the data collection was performed through interviews and the temperature monitoring trials are out of the scope of this study and do not affect the LCA results.

 

Moreover, the paragraph 3.1 “General rules for the environmental impact assessment of organisations” result little dispersive and for this reason it should be summarise.

Section 3.1 was summarised according to reviewers’ suggestion.

 

 

In addition, the paragraph 3.3 “Definition of goal and scope” should be summarise and reduced at 3 or 4 lines and it should be placed at the end of introduction.

The general goal of the study was described in the introduction. However, ”goal and scope” is also the first and most important phase of the O-LCA and the authors believe it should be maintained in the Methodology section.

 

The paragraph 3.2 “Life cycle inventory” should not be divided in sub paragraph, the extensive use of sub-paragraph negatively affect the understanding of the text by the readers. For this reason I suggest to the Authors to merging the all sub-paragraphs into one paragraph and, after, I suggest to summarise it.

The authors believe dividing the life cycle inventory according to the charity’s processes makes the manuscript more organised, especially because they are very extensive sections. However, the indexes were removed in the revised version as suggested by the reviewer.

 

The results is well presented and they are well discussed, also in comparison to the data reported in the literature.

Finally, the conclusions resulted adequate to the data showed and to the aim of the research.

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors.,

Good work. You put a lot of work into conducting this important research. Both the concept and the findings are original and useful. The study focuses on the crucial topic of how IoT applications affect the environment in the food systems. Emerging technologies raise concerns even though they have many benefits for solving developmental issues. I would like to thank you for your work and offer you a few suggestions:

ü  The study explored how alternative technologies, such as drones, can help offset negative consequences and focused on the environmental impact of IoT technology on DHM collection and utilization. Other causes of milk waste, such as mothers' and donors' reduced knowledge of milk expression and saving, managerial challenges, and socio-cultural and economic variables, were not taken into consideration in this study. We would have a clearer and more accurate view of the entire system if we took these difficulties into consideration. I suggest at the very least outlining these concerns in the conclusion and making recommendations for further research.

ü  You haven't offered any practical solutions or policy implications for reusing human milk or using IoT in the food system in your conclusion. You could provide clarification and suggestions.

ü  You might introduce the notion of a more decentralized HMB system, where local healthcare centers can play a bigger role. HMF might act as the main organizing organization supervising different branches.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

 Dear authors,

Good work. You put a lot of work into conducting this important research. Both the concept and the findings are original and useful. The study focuses on the crucial topic of how IoT applications affect the environment in the food systems. Emerging technologies raise concerns even though they have many benefits for solving developmental issues. I would like to thank you for your work and offer you a few suggestions:

 

ü  The study explored how alternative technologies, such as drones, can help offset negative consequences and focused on the environmental impact of IoT technology on DHM collection and utilization. Other causes of milk waste, such as mothers' and donors' reduced knowledge of milk expression and saving, managerial challenges, and socio-cultural and economic variables, were not taken into consideration in this study. We would have a clearer and more accurate view of the entire system if we took these difficulties into consideration. I suggest at the very least outlining these concerns in the conclusion and making recommendations for further research.

The priority aim of employing drones is to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels required by motorcycles and not the reduction of milk waste. The environmental impact avoided is based on this hypothesis.

The reviewer is correct, and the leading cause of milk waste in this HMB is the mothers' and donors' reduced knowledge of milk expression and saving. Currently, it is not possible to estimate the amount of human milk wasted during the transportation stage and the value used in the sensitivity analysis (1-3% is an assumption, as mentioned in the manuscript).

Recommendations for future work have been included in the revised version of the manuscript.

 

ü  You haven't offered any practical solutions or policy implications for reusing human milk or using IoT in the food system in your conclusion. You could provide clarification and suggestions.

It is not the purpose of using

The purpose of using IoT technologies is not to reuse breast milk but to monitor environmental conditions to prevent the milk from spoiling. The milk would be used the same way as it is currently. No legal implications for using technologies to monitor environmental conditions during transportation were observed.

 

ü  You might introduce the notion of a more decentralized HMB system, where local healthcare centers can play a bigger role. HMF might act as the main organizing organization supervising different branches.

The HMF operates the Hearts Milk Bank, which has a central processing facility just north of London, but delivers services across England and Wales through a network of six hubs. The charity aims to expand the hub network over the next 5 years so that donor milk only travels no further than a certain mileage (e.g., 50 miles, but the precise distance will be calculated according to future LCA assessments). There is also a network of NHS milk banks, and ongoing work between the UK Association for Milk Banking and the HMF to determine the best approach to delivering services equitably and sustainably in the future. This alternative is mentioned in the discussion of Figure 7. Please see pages 16-17.

 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper has addressed the Organisational-Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) approach for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies implementation in a  human milk bank. It is meaningful and interesting. However, here also has some issues should be addressed or improved below.

1.  The OLCA was used for the IoT. So what kinds of the IoT system used in this paper？ It should be added in the manuscript.

2.  The monitoring has been used for the temperature and humidity sensing. So waht is the hardware or devices used in here, and How did the OLCA used for the detail IoT hardware or devices. The detail inventory should be added.

3. The assumes and boundary of the OLCA should be also addressed in more detail since the IoT system application has a large aplications.

4. How big the temperature and humidity sensor data would be in the sceneario B? and is it has the influence on the OLCA results.

5. How did the OLCA resuslts improve the sustainablity of the IoT system used?

6. Why used the OLCA, is any other LCA methods also could used for the evaluation in this paper? 

Author Response

Reviewer 3

 

This paper has addressed the Organisational-Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA) approach for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies implementation in a  human milk bank. It is meaningful and interesting. However, here also has some issues should be addressed or improved below.

 

1. The OLCA was used for the IoT. So what kinds of the IoT system used in this paper？ It should be added in the manuscript.

The IoT system was described in Section 3.2.4 “Milk monitoring”. A total of 12 sensors were installed in this organisation. The sensors measure the conditions and send the collected information to a Big Data Server in real-time. The server sends alerts when the temperature exceeds the acceptable limit.

 

2. The monitoring has been used for the temperature and humidity sensing. So waht is the hardware or devices used in here, and How did the OLCA used for the detail IoT hardware or devices. The detail inventory should be added.

 

The hardware, devices and how O-LCA was used to determine the environmental impacts were described in Section 3.2.4 “Milk monitoring”. The inventory was presented in Table 3. More details were presented in the revised version of the manuscript. Please see pages 9-10.

 

3. The assumes and boundary of the OLCA should be also addressed in more detail since the IoT system application has a large aplications.

Scenario B presented in the system boundary (Figure 1) is described in detail in Section 3.2.4 “Milk monitoring”.

 

4. How big the temperature and humidity sensor data would be in the sceneario B? and is it has the influence on the OLCA results.

The Big Data Server comprises one unit of computer equipment, a redundant power supply, processors and storage drives with a total capacity of 3.7 TB. The estimated electricity consumption of the server is 1152 kWh per month. To allocate the electricity consumption, it was considered that each row of data generated per recording occupies around 87 bytes in the server. The sensors are configured to record data every 5 minutes while in a trip, or every 12 hours outside of a trip.

 

5. How did the OLCA results improve the sustainablity of the IoT system used?

The O-LCA provides credible results and allows companies to make tactical sustainability decisions. In this case, the trade-offs between IoT implementation and food waste reduction were analysed. It was observed that despite the environmental impacts associated with these technologies, especially regarding resource use, the impacts avoided due to food waste reduction are higher and offset the adverse effects. Some recommendations were also made to improve the use of IoT systems, for example, the substitution of batteries, as the hotspot analysis showed that this is the most resource intense material. 

 

6. Why used the OLCA, is any other LCA methods also could used for the evaluation in this paper? 

O-LCA is the recommended methodology to evaluate the environmental impact of organisations by UNEP/SETAC. The ISO 14040/44/72 standards are a solid foundation of the LCA community and the basis for this method. Assessing an organisation’s inputs and outputs using a traditional LCA is an arduous task, and the O-LCA methodology was designed to make this process more manageable.

Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) could also be used to evaluate the environmental impact of organisations. The OEF provided a significant advancement in creating environmental footprinting standards for lifecycle-based organisations. However, this method provides a single norm for specific decision points and does not offer flexibility to the practitioner, especially regarding the system boundaries and the selection of impact categories for the LCIA phase.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper was revised well.